Pride and Prejudice and Kitties

I can haz crumpetz?

As if cat memes haven’t vociferously
enough taken over the interwebbed world, they’re digging their claws
into classic literature. Pride and Prejudice and Kitties
(Skyhorse, $16.95, 195 pages) is “chick lit meets kit lit,” according to
Pamela Jane and Deborah Guyol, the Portland writers who reimagined Jane
Austen’s classic with Mr. Darcy as an all-black shorthair.

What would Austen
think of her characters made feline and posed—or photoshopped with
varying quality—into Regency settings? Abbreviated chapters accommodate
readers with a cat’s attention span, each opening with a kitten-themed
rewrite. “Netherfield Park is marked at last,” we begin. And “after
catnip tea, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of her promise to
pounce on the piano.” Snippets of Austen’s original sneak in, punctuated
by pictures of kittens in nightcaps or the furry Fitzwilliam with
parchment and the caption. This much is true: This is a lot harder than
tweeting.

But no one is picking this up because they’re interested in 19th-century British literature. Pride and Prejudice and Kitties
is a novelty gift for your knitting-club friend or a coffee-table
amusement. After all, animal photos are like catnip or crack, even for
bookworms. Maybe especially for bookworms.

Butcher the text though it may, Pride and Prejudice and Kitties is a lighthearted labor of love aimed at pure amusement. Jane and Guyol, who’ve respectively authored children’s books and The Complete Guide to Contract Lawyering,
bonded in high school and built a lifelong friendship on quirky
literary ideas. It took six years to find a publisher for this
“cat-lover’s romp through Jane Austen’s classic,” their first completed
project.

The book is more cat than classic, but as fan fiction goes, we’re just glad it’s not Shades of Grey Tabby Cats.
Tight-laced lit lackeys may get their haunches up, but everyone else
can chuckle over a fat Siberian kitty in tartan and lace.